Malcolm X Quotes

Like so many addicts, I'd thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around

I do believe that I'm an addict on one level or another at all times.

I have photographs taken of me at the time I was addicted, and thought I looked good. I see them today and realize my eyes were dead.

Everyone reaches their point in time where either they die or they get sick of doing drugs. It started getting debilitating. I enjoy my music a lot better than my drugs.

I mean, I inherited the disease of alcoholism, and I learned early to get help when I needed it. I always went to people who knew more than I did.

It is clear to me that my life has become completely unmanageable because I am addicted to alcohol and drugs.

I could never stop drugs, I could never stop drinking, until I received my spiritual awakening.

The drinking was getting way out of control. I just didn't recognize myself anymore. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was. I always had to have some drinks with me in my bag. Just waking up shaking and then having Bloody Marys on your own, first thing in the morning-I started to feel really pathetic about it. So I was like, "I can't live like this." It was just this really awful feeling of becoming a totally different person and not being able to control it at all. Then I tried to not drink, but that didn't work. So I figured I should just go to rehab.

I was on drugs when I wrote some of my songs. It was a rough time for me, but I'm lucky enough to be one of the people who learned from that experience and moved on, where other people just got addicted and more addicted and more addicted until it killed them.

But my activities have been pretty much focused in the last almost 30 years on the recovery, of my own recovery, the understanding for my family of my recovery.

When I got sober, that was 1990.

There's the person that's the addict, and then there's the person that's who you are.

It's so weird that I went to rehab. I always said that I would die before I went to rehab. But I thought, 'I'm going to stay here tonight.' And I stayed there for a month. It was great.

I mean, I inherited the disease of alcoholism, and I learned early to get help when I needed it.

If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.

I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.

In '85, I went through rehab and I wasn't ready. If you're not ready, you're not ready. You don't want to hear the truth, and you're gonna keep doing what you keep doing.

I had two experiences. I had a wonderful experience in rehab, and I had a terrible experience in rehab. But, to be honest, in the end, it wasn't rehab that got me sober. It was just finally surrendering and saying, 'I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. Somebody help me.'

I understand the world of addiction. I get it. I know how fleeting recovery can be.

I know I didn't want to get caught up in the cycle of drugs and violence that was around me. Deep down inside, I felt there was something better outside the situation I was in.

I come from a position where it seems like I have an addictive quality to everything in my life.

I just need to do Pac's work. I just need to. Maybe because I'm a recovering addict, I'm obsessed like that.

I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.

But I will say that the drugs are much more ferocious then they used to be. There are people wrecking their lives with addiction, which seems much more severe.

I only get ill when I give up drugs... I don't have a drug problem, I have a police problem.